The Oxford Handbook of Herman Melville

Now more than a century since the revival that placed Herman Melville at the center of the US literary canon, his work stands as one of the most important touchstones of world literature. The Oxford Handbook of Herman Melville aims to reintroduce readers to a writer whom they think they know well by re-examining Melville's entire corpus--the novels, short prose, and poetry--in light of the diversity and vibrancy of global Melville studies.

Bringing together the most innovative work of international scholars, The Oxford Handbook of Herman Melville offers a comprehensive survey of both Melville's writing and the new approaches it continues to introduce into literary studies. By engaging urgent discourses such as those around indigeneity and race, ecology and energy, gender and sexuality studies, and reimagining well-developed critical approaches to questions of literary history, politics, war, economics, aesthetics, and philosophy in Melville's work, this Handbook seeks to push the study of Melville's work into its second century. Attending to Melville's origins--biographical and textual, intellectual and aesthetic, historical and political--the Handbook also examines Melville's currency and contemporaneity, the ways that his writing continues to generate new thought and new art. This volume, in short, endeavors to present a new critical Melville for new critical times.

Jennifer Greiman, Associate Professor, Department of English,, Wake Forest University,Michael Jonik, Reader in English, University of Sussex

Jennifer Greiman is Professor of English and Director of the Humanities Institute at Wake Forest University. She specializes in 18th- and 19th-century Atlantic literatures, democratic theory, and the work of Herman Melville. Her latest book, Melville's Democracy: Radical Figuration and Political Form, was published in 2023. She is also the author of Democracy's Spectacle: Sovereignty and Public Life in Antebellum American Writing (2010), co-editor of The Last Western: Deadwood and the End of American Empire (2013), and Associate editor of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies.


Michael Jonik teaches American literature and critical theory at the University of Sussex. He has published Herman Melville and the Politics of the Inhuman (Cambridge 2018), and writes on pre-1900 American literature, continental philosophy, politics, and the history of science. He has held fellowships at the Cornell Society for the Humanities and the Paris Institute for Advanced Studies, and won research grants from the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is founding member of The British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, and Reviews and Special Issues editor for the journal Textual Practice.

List of AbbreviationsList of Contributors1. Introduction: Melville's Third Century, Jennifer Greiman and Michael JonikPart I Critical and Textual Histories2. Copyright, 1892, By Elizabeth Melville: Rethinking the Field Formation of Melville Studies, Jordan Alexander Stein and Adam Fales3. For Ever Slides Away: Melville and Critical Theory, Stuart Burrows4. Clarel the Saracen: Historical Romance, Islam, and the Medieval, Michael Jonik5. Melville and English Renaissance Writing, Andrew Hadfield6. Constructing Timloeon, Etc. and the Great Pyramid, Samuel OtterPart II Sexualities and Genders7. Comings-out: Non-normative Domesticities in 'The Apple-Tree Table', Rodrigo Andres8. Capabilities of Enjoyment: Pleasure in Melville, Edouard Marsoin9. Men at Sea: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Shirley SamuelsPart III Indigeneities and Colonialisms10. Comparative Indigeneities/Comparative Colonialisms: Queequeg, Hunilla, Ungar, and the Queen of Sheba, Brian Yothers11. Melville and American Solitude: A Settler-Colonial Poetics, Nicholas Spengler12. Indian-Hating: Ontological Anthropology, Indigenous Knowledges, and The Confidence-Man, Kiron WardPart IV. Races and Racializations13. Great Curse that of Babel: Translating Revolution in "Benito Cereno", Mary Grace Albanese14. Dispensable Labor and Racialization aboard the Pequod, James Gerard Noel15. Becoming Black in Billy Budd, Sailor, Lenora Warren16. 'A Sort of Crutch': Racial Prosthetics in Melville's "Benito Cereno", Peter Boxall17. Perplexities of State: Melville, Democracy, Regulation, Cecile Roudeau18. Veridiction and the Democratic State of Exception in Billy Budd, Stephen W. Sawyer19. Inscrutable Malice: Moby Dick and the Resistance to Capital, Paul Downes20. The Point of Interest: Economics and Aesthetics in The Confidence-Man, Chad LuckPart VI. Geographies and Histories21. Melville's Raft Books: Wayfinding in Mardi and Moby-Dick, Alex Calder22. Geographies, Genealogies, and Genres: Family Resemblances in Pierre, Thomas Massnick23. Portuguese Vengeance: Melville's Narrative of Empire and Resistance, Wyn Kelley24. Battle-Pieces and the Paratexts of History, Jill Spivey CadellPart VII. Ecologies and energies25. Typee and Trees, Melissa Gniadek26. Moby-Dick and the Political Ecology of the Stranded Whale, Peter Riley27. Melville's Foams, Tom Nurmi28. Melville, Energy, and the Anthropocene, Jeffrey InskoPart VIII. Aesthetics and Poetics29. Battle-Pieces and the Problem of Beauty, Cody Marrs30. Battle-Pieces and Melville's Poetics of Noise, Katie McGettigan31. Hermes' Gift: Melville, Classical Antiquity and the Nonhuman, Ronan Ludot-VlasakPart IX. Philosophies32. Command in Melville, Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz33. Melville's Ark: Modernity, Reality, and the Art of Telling the Truth, K.L. Evans34. Thoughts of Isabel and Emerson: A Philosophy of Wonder in Pierre, Dominic Mastroianni35. Herman Melville's Pessimist Verse: James Thomson and Timoleon, Etc., Paul HurhAfterword, Branka Arsic